Featured Titles from Naxos at 3 for $20 - December 2012

Naxos CDs are now 3 for $20 at ArkivMusic (with most 2-disc sets counting as 2, and most 3-disc sets counting as 3 toward the 3). Buy 3 or more and pay just $6.66 per disc! Our favorite new releases and top catalog titles are below, or view thousands more 3-for-$20 CDs here! Be sure to also view new bargain boxes of Naxos catalog highlights. (Some multi-disc sets and all Super Audio CDs, DVDs, and audiobooks are sale-priced separately and are not part of the "3-for-$20" promotion. Sale ends at midnight ET 1/1/13.)

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu excelled in chamber music and made a substantial contribution to the piano trio repertoire of the twentieth century, his keen ear for balance and sonority finding here a perfect medium for his music.

The performances are first rate in all respects—at least as fine as the recorded competition. Falletta gets an enthusiastic response from the Ulster Orchestra, and her interpretive choices sound unerringly right. A fine disc.

This disc ranges over the centuries to explore the spiritually charged text of The Lord's Prayer. Each composer's setting illuminates the others, shedding rich interpretive light on the prayer's poetic and devotional aspects.

This fabulous recording features lesser known violin repertoire, played with a keen advocacy. Anyone with a love of Holst and Vaughan Williams, Grieg, and J.P.E. Hartmann will positively revel in this repertoire.

Marangoni enjoys the piano concertos' romantic lushness and has the fingers to make the most of it. This first recording of the dances from Love's Labour's Lost is most desirable. Color and transparency are two strong features here.

You’re treated to a soprano and baritone with voices as attractive and well-suited to this music as we could hope for, and a lutenist who is both master of instrument and of the genre, in this case 15th-century songs. And the instrumental group Ensemble Dulce Melos is superb.

Rodrigo’s well-crafted gems in a tonal style that's neither dated nor predictable convincingly manage to blend classical, folk, and flamenco. Jérémy Jouve is fully up to the demands of this music. This is how classical guitar should be played.

Tchaikovsky transports you into another world with such consummate skill you are left in no doubt that you are in the hands of a genius. Each piece is a miniature masterpiece. From lullabies to mazurkas, from waltzes to meditations, these little gems sparkle with light and are simply delightful.

Pitts has shown a sensitivity to the range of early music that places him among the leading interpreters. Collectors will want this just for the Kellyk work, but it stands on its own as a single disc of this repertoire.

The feats of King Arthur and his Knights have inspired artistic creation in many art forms. In this disc we hear how troubadours spread their stories as we journey through twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-century Europe to encounter the Arthurian musical traditions of Germany, Spain, France, and England.

The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir is one of the best in the world in this kind of repertoire, partnered with a truly outstanding orchestra – those strings give Brahms’s richest, warmest, most lyrical passages everything we, or Brahms, could hope for.

Francesco La Vecchia and his Roman orchestra have won accolades for their previous discs spotlighting 20th-century Italian composer Alfredo Casella. Now they bring us another album of his music featuring all world-premiere recordings.

Captivating from beginning to end. If you are skeptical about a composer whose name hardly ever appears on concert programs, just purchase this disc. It will convince you that Graupner was a great composer who deserves to be mentioned with Telemann, Fasch, and Bach.

The St. Albans Abbey Girls Choir can stand comparison with the best boys' choirs, even if their sound is slightly different. The purity and steadiness of the girls' voices are in themselves utterly delightful.

This is the recording of the acclaimed production staged in New York in 2011. Grétry’s score abounds in lyrical grace and imaginative strokes. The overture, practically program music, features a rush of fanfares.

Wolfgang Rihm's works for violin and piano reflect the breadth of Rihm’s various changing styles, which are almost unique in today’s music in marrying contemporary technique with emotionally powerful resonances.

The scintillating virtuoso pianist and composer William Vincent Wallace wrote a series of waltzes, nocturnes, mazurkas, barcarolles, and other works dazzling in their variety, invention, wit, humor and charm.

It is hard to imagine a more eloquent spokesman for this repertoire than Dossin. His refined and multifaceted pianism, combined with his formidable intellectual and musical grasp, make him one of the more remarkable Liszt interpreters before the public today.

The score of Mavis in Las Vegas is certainly one of the most delightful that Maxwell Davies has ever written. With the composer conducting, it is a delightful performance. Mavis is a gem, and I wouldn’t want to be without it.

Masó does the music proud. His playing is superlatively responsive and idiomatic. The recording has sufficient bloom to lend romantic enchantment to Turina’s visions of his beloved homeland. This unjustly neglected music deserves attention.

Banowetz’s thoughtful interpretations emphasize the varied character of the music, and his touch delineates every nuance from delicate clarity to full-bodied resonance. His pedaling beautifully complements his incisive technique, adding luminous or ominous colors as required. This welcome release showcases an unsung composer who merits attention.

Pleyel's music is always well crafted, melodious, and original, with an abundance of memorable themes and surprising turns of direction – all of which is exemplified by these substantial Haydn-flavored symphonies.

Alwyn’s piano music is absorbing, varied, colorful, and inspired. Ashley Wass plays these pieces as if he’s lived with them for years. For anyone who responds to the piano music of Debussy, Ravel, Grieg, Fauré, or Prokofiev.

This exciting disc makes a very welcome return to the catalog on Naxos. The Respighi transcriptions reveal his typical mastery of orchestration, and Elgar’s arrangement of the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor is a real treat.